The $49.5 million allocated by the Senate Appropriations Committee to pay for litigation involving corrections officers is just one among many lawsuits currently pending against the Missouri Department of Corrections (MDOC), according to an attorney who recently secured an $11 million settlement.
“We need to evaluate the exposure that the state has,” said Kansas City-based attorney Eric Playter.
There have been at least four verdicts against the MDOC since 2014 as well as settlements, according to Playter.
"We owe a duty to the taxpayers to make that evaluation and try to resolve the cases that we can resolve," he said.
The Senate committee offered the multimillion-dollar appropriation as a budget amendment and will include funds to pay corrections officers for the time they are working in the prison, picking up equipment, and reporting to their duty post.
MDOC employees filed their lawsuit in 2012 alleging they were being shortchanged out of earnings.
"The process takes so much time because you have to go through the administrative process, such as filing with the EEOC and the Missouri Commission on Human Rights," Playter told the St. Louis Record.
The plaintiffs' attorney, Gary Burger of St. Louis, will receive $16.5 million plus expenses and some $13 million for negotiating more pay for 15 minutes of extra work, according to media reports.
"Our state tax dollars are paying these MDOC employees and they are paying the Attorney General's office," Player said. "The Attorney General's office knows that there is significant risk in every single one of these cases because of the evidence that's been adduced."
Playter represented Leesa Wiseman, a deputy warden at the Kansas City Reentry Center, who alleged she had experienced escalating incidents of retaliation after testifying when corrections officers filed lawsuits against the MDOC. As previously reported in the St. Louis Record, a Jackson County jury awarded Wiseman $11 million of which $9.5 million was in punitive damages. Playter declined to disclose the percentage of attorney fees he will receive.
“They can't change what the MDOC did, but whether it's Eric Schmitt or somebody else in the Attorney General’s office, somebody needs to be doing an evaluation of how bad the conduct is, how many people have been affected by the conduct, how many lawsuits are out there and what needs to be done as a fiduciary to the taxpayers of this state.”
Burger did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
"Part of our job as plaintiff's lawyers is to expose corruption where it exists in the hopes that something meaningful changes and the problem is nothing meaningful is changing," Playter added.